Cockroache; Ecology, behavior & history - W.J. Bell

feed (Reuben, 1988). At present, then, too little information
is available for a fair evaluation of Tallamy’s (1994)
hypothesis.
SOCIAL INFLUENCES
Social behavior in cockroaches, as in other insects (Tallamy
and Wood, 1986), is largely a function of the type,
accessibility, abundance, persistence, predictability, and
distribution of the food resources on which they depend.
Large cockroach aggregations are found only where food
is consistently renewed by vertebrates (bats, birds, humans).
Biparental care is found only in wood-feeding
cockroaches, whose diet is physically tough, low in nitrogen,
and digested in cooperation with microorganisms.
Young developmental stages in both aggregations and
families rely at least in part on food originating from fellow
cockroaches. Although predation pressure can alter
social structure (Lott, 1991), and has been suggested as a
selective pressure in cockroaches (Gautier et al., 1988),
data with which we can evaluate its influence are scarce.
Reproductive mode is unrelated to gregariousness; both
oviparous and ovoviparous cockroaches aggregate. Subsocial
cockroaches, however, are almost exclusively ovoviviparous.
While the costs and benefits of social behavior
for other developmental stages vary with a wide
variety of factors, the benefactors in most cockroach social
systems are young nymphs. Several uniquely blattarian
characteristics influence cockroach social structure,
such as the ability to mobilize stored nitrogenous reserves
and the need for hatchlings to acquire an inoculum of gut
microbes. Cockroaches also display similarities to not
only other insect but also to vertebrate social systems
(e.g., altricial development). They are thus potentially excellent
models with which to test general hypotheses in
social ecology.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 149